Murdoch to thrive in Research Quality Framework

 
Professor Andris Stelbovics
Pro Vice Chancellor (Research)

Murdoch University has always prided itself on the quality of its research and its research intensiveness.

In recent years the quality of Australian universities has been assessed by various ranking exercises both nationally and internationally.

Our university ranks consistently between the top third and top quarter of Australian institutions over a wide range of research performance indicators and in the top 500 universities of the world according to the highly regarded Shanghai Institute of Higher Education ranking.

Are rankings important? Yes they are for several reasons.

First of all students and alumni have a sense of pride in their university and being seen as a top-class research university is one major factor in students' choice of university for their studies.

Secondly our staff feel a similar pride and it is a major factor in attracting new research active staff.

Thirdly the federal government 'rewards' our universities for their research and research training based on a set performance indicators that are used to assign block research grants commonly referred to as IGS, RTS and RIBG.

These grants are earned on performance in obtaining research income, training of postgraduate students (including load and completions) and research publications.

Despite grumblings within the sector, the competitive nature of the schemes has resulted in a steady increase in performance across the sector.

It should be noted that one 'has to swim faster' even to maintain an institution's existing level of funding. That Murdoch has achieved an increase in funding in these circumstances over the past four years is not serendipitous.

The funding has been directed back to the researchers. It has been used for a set of strategic initiatives driven by a focused R&D Board, which are designed to reward our best researchers and areas research strength by providing further opportunities for growth.

This year, the decision has been made to revise the existing system for block grant funding. We are now destined to participate in the design and implementation of a new system called the research quality framework or RQF for short.

A criticism of our existing system has been that while it rewards 'outputs' in the form of publications the quality of our research has not been under sufficient scrutiny.

Where systems that measure quality of research have been introduced, primarily in the United Kingdom, there is now considerable evidence that the quality and impact of the research outputs of the UK has significantly increased.

Our RQF will be similarly designed to measure both quality and impact of research. The precise metrics are still being developed in consultation with the stakeholders and will be trialed in 2006.

By 2008 we will have a new RQF system that will replace the existing two block research grants, ITS and RGS.

I will be ensuring that Murdoch University is optimally positioned to adapt to the new framework.

To this end we are participating in our own trialing and assessment of the quality of our research.

This process will place an additional burden on our researchers but it has to be done in order to ensure that an adequate level of funding under the new system will be returned to maintain our vibrant research community.